


Camilla Collins is not a sexy lamp

by exbex



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, omgcpwomen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 13:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11082636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exbex/pseuds/exbex
Summary: Jack has room for her in his life. It’s a few feet across from him in the cafeteria, when their schedules match up enough to get lunch together and neither of them are distracted by other people or things. It’s the few minutes he always spares for her if their paths happen to cross in corridors or on morning runs. Too little to really count, too much to cut him loose.





	Camilla Collins is not a sexy lamp

Jack Zimmermann is just missing a couple of ingredients. The thing is, this wouldn’t even be a deal-breaker. Like a hearty soup that is just missing the perfect seasonings, he could still be satisfying. Trouble is, he’s just not interested.

Camilla shakes her head just slightly. She’s comparing Jack to food; there might as well be a snout coming out of her face.

“It’s Pearl Harbor day,” she says, because Jack is a history major, for one, and Camilla is also suddenly very aware that four Winter Screws is really two too many.

“Oh yeah!” Jack’s eyes light up. “I think I’m going to incorporate World War II into my thesis, actually.” He launches into some topics he’s batting around, and it’s easy, like it always is, to listen to him talk about what interests him, easy to respond to his questions. It’s puzzling, why they can’t seem to keep this momentum going in the day-to-day.

“You want to get out of here?” she asks when the conversation hits a lull and it’s clear that neither of them are particularly interested in returning to the dance floor.

**

It’s a twenty-minute walk to her apartment, which is at least twelve minutes more than it really should take her to decide if she wants to have sex with Jack tonight. Because Jack is literally everything she could ask for in a sexual partner: generous, enthusiastic, playful, respectful, conscientious, and skilled. 

Acquaintances with benefits just doesn’t have the same ring to it as friends with benefits. Also? About a million times more pathetic.

Camilla sighs inwardly. It’d almost be easier if Jack were an idiot, or a jerk. Then she’d probably had never slept with him, never dated him, never wished that they could be actual friends.

“Goodnight,” she says brightly when they get to her door. He looks disappointed for just a second but then he smiles. “I had a really nice time,” he says, and there’s no doubt about his sincerity.

“Me too,” she replies, and finds that she means it.

“Goodnight,” he says, and kisses her on the cheek. It’s sweet, if a little stiff.

**

Jack has room for her in his life. It’s a few feet across from him in the cafeteria, when their schedules match up enough to get lunch together and neither of them are distracted by other people or things. It’s the few minutes he always spares for her if their paths happen to cross in corridors or on morning runs. Too little to really count, too much to cut him loose.

Camilla has always gotten a bit wistful when people drift away, as they inevitably do.

**

Graduation is bittersweet, as expected, but the majority of the emotional labor was already completed as winter had melted away to spring, and by the time Camilla has removed her cap and gown and taken one last look at the campus that she loves, her focus is shifting to her stomach that’s starting to growl and her feet that are starting to ache.

“Ready to go? Said all your goodbyes?” her mother asks gently.

Camilla thinks about Jack, how she’d meant to seek him out, wish him luck on his first season in Providence. Maybe if the Cs were closer to the Zs, she would have.

“Yes Mom, I’m ready.”


End file.
